The Prince

PROFILE of Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, 53, the Saudi ambassador to the United States... Tells about a Clinton/Bush attempt at resolving the Palestinian problem which began before the transition in 2001, and ended in failure, despite many compromises offered to Yasir Arafat... Clinton had been working on a compromise for years; after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he had called this effort part of his "personal journey of atonement." Bandar believed that Arafat’s failure to accept the deal in January of 2001 was a tragic mistake-a crime, really... Late last year, it turned out that Bandar’s wife, Princess Haifa, had made a charitable donation that ended up in the bank account of the wife of a man who helped two of the hijackers. F.B.I. and Justice Department officials later said that the financial trail was indirect: a check from the Princess, intended for a Jordanian woman married to a Saudi who needed an operation, had been endorsed to someone else. But the reaction in the press and from some politicians was harsh: What side were the Saudis on?... Unlike most ambassadors, Bandar has unprecedented access to the President and to most senior American officials. On the night that we met in McLean, George Tenet, the director of the C.I.A., stopped by for a quick meeting, and when I visited Bandar last month he received a telephone call from Condoleezza Rice... . He is fond of American colloquialisms and American history, and he likes Big Macs served on silver platters... Tells about Saudi & Libyan cooperation with U.S. intelligence after the Sept. 11 attacks... A couple of months after the terrorist strikes, Tenet privately called Saudi coöperation "fantastic," and Dale Watson, who was then the F.B.I.’s chief of counterterrorism, told me that the Saudis were doing whatever they were asked to do. Bandar believed that before September 11th Saudi Arabia had been at least as vigilant about Al Qaeda as the United States, and certainly more vigilant than Britain or Germany... Bandar noted that, as far back as early 1998, the Saudis had alerted the United States to the prominent and dangerous role played by an Al Qaeda operative named Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri... Bandar travels frequently on his private Airbus A-340; since December, he has travelled six times between Washington and Saudi Arabia, with stops in Pakistan, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Paris, and London, carrying messages between Bush and Crown Prince Abdullah, the de-facto Saudi ruler, and other heads of state. Tells about his early life as a fighter pilot. He became the Saudi Air Force’s chief acrobatics artist... Tells how he joined the Saudi diplomatic effort in the seventies, and tells about his relationship with Colin Powell... Mentions the Saudi frustration with the peace process...